There is no
word for what an Englishman eats
after his meat that does not make
some other Englishman wince. The
upper class say pudding (or
'pud') - a patent misnomer if
what comes up is sorbet or
grapes. Dessert, which all
Americans use without bother,
strikes English ears as
pretentious, whereas sweet -
which after all explains most
nearly what it is - puts
middle-class teeth on edge. So in
many a trendy English bistro
nowadays, the profiteroles and
rum babas are improbably
described as afters. It is a good
old-fashioned working-class word,
pressed into middle-class service
to cover an absurd and quite
unnecessary difficulty.

Ale
The English type of beer. Unlike
most foreign beers, it is made by
allowing the yeast to ferment at
the top. It should mature
naturally in its cask in the
cellar of a pub. Unhappily the
giant breweries have found it
convenient to filter pasteurise
or chill their beer so that it no
longer matures, But is stable or
dead, and is then delivered to
the glass by gas pressure from a
cylinder of carbon dioxide.

It was
antipathy to this dead but
artificially fizzed beer which
precipitated the Campaign for
Real Ale (CAMRA). This is beer
made from the traditional
ingredients - malted barley,
liquor (water) and yeast-matured
in casks and deliverecl to the
glass by any method that does not
involve gas; generally by a
simple suction hand pump, or
drawn by gravity straight from
the barrel. CAMRA, despite some
vexing internal political
troubles, has been a great
populist movement, and the
nearest English male equivalent
to Women's Lib.

For the
English love of ale is true and
deep. 'Good ale, the true and
proper drink of Englishmen,
declared George Borrow. and every
Englishman feels with the Boy in
Shakespeare's Henry V at the
battle: 'Would 1 were in a
alehouse in London: 1 would give
all my fame for a pot of ale and
safety.' Yet the best single
remark on the matter was made by
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, then Poet
Laureate, on the occasion of his
visit to the International
Exhibition of 1862. Having
written an ode to be sung by a
choir of four thousand at its
opening he enquired: 'Is there
anywhere in this damned place
where we can get a decent bottle
of Bass?' Hence the innate thrall
of the great real ale brewers to
the Englishman, reverberating
through his mind like a litany.
Adnams of Southwold, Ruddles of
Rutland, Theakston of Masham,
Vaux of Sunderland, Thwaites of
Blackburn, and Tennyson's
favourite, four-square tipple,
Bass of Burton.

An
Englisman's home is his castle.
From the song, "All Things
Bright and Beautiful" comes
the now politically incorrect
words: "The rich man at his
castle, The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly, He
ordered their estate".

Tony
Martin is a Norfolk farmer who
shot and killed a young man who
was in the process of burgling
his home. Tony Martin was been
convicted of murder and was now
in prison for life - sentence now
reduced to manslaughter..

The Bank of
England is the central bank of
the United Kingdom. Sometimes
known as the "Old Lady of
Threadneedle Street" it
stands, literally and
figuratively, at the financial
centre of the City of London. The
Court
of Directors is
responsible for the management of
the Bank while staff matters are
looked after by the Personnel
Division .
It also offers Educational
Services for
students of all ages and
specialist training and technical
assistance for other central
banks.

Big
Ben Originally the Great Bell of
Westminster; now the bell, clock,
and St Stephen's Tower of the
Houses of Parliament. No-one
seems to know quite how it got
its name. One theory holds that
it was named after Sir Benjamin
Hall, the outsize Commissioner of
Works when it was being made;
another, that it is named after
the celebrated boxer Benjamin
Caunt, an eighteen-stone publican
who had just fought an epic sixty
rounds with Nathaniel Langham. It
first tolled the time in 1859,
but was found to be cracked after
only a few months; a seven
hundredweight hammer had been
fitted although a four
hundredweight maximum had been
stipulated. Famed for its
accuracy, the great clock was
found to be only one and a half
seconds out even after the House
of Commons was destroyed in an
air raid in 1941 and its face
shattered. In 1976 it stopped at
3.45 a.m.; the shaft of the fly
fan had fractured. Metal fatigue
was diagnosed. The nation -
indeed the world - mourned. Get
well cards poured in from places
as distant as Manhattan and
Oporto. Happily Big Ben is now
restored, and government
engineers say it should remain
accurate for at least the next
two hundred years. It is,
however, still slightly out of
tune, but that makes it instantly
recognisable world wide.While the
sonorous chimes of Big Ben still
resound, the Englishman
instinctively feels that all's
right with the world.

James
Bigglesworth was a fictional
character, appearing in 96 books
and numerous other publications
by Captain W.E. Johns.

James
was born in India in August 1899
where he spent much of his early
years. In 1913 he moved to
England to live with his uncle
and in February 1914 he began at
Malton Hall School. It was here
that he inherited the nickname
Biggles, originally given to his
elder brother, Charles. After the
outbreak of the First World War,
Biggles joined the Royal Flying
Corps with the rank of Second
Lieutenant and learnt to fly
fighter planes. He was posted to
France in 169 Squadron only weeks
later.

Interest in
the race goes far beyond those
people who have rowed or who went
to either University. Since 1829
the Boat Race has become a
national sporting event
comparable in the public mind
with only three other highlights
of the sporting calendar: the
Grand National, the Derby and the
FA Cup.

In full SIR WINSTON
LEONARD SPENCER CHURCHILL British
statesman, orator, and author who
as prime minister (1940-45,
1951-55) rallied the British
people during World War II and
led his country from the brink of
defeat to victory.

The
original record or summary of William I the
Conqueror's survey of England. By
contemporaries the whole
operation was known as "the
description of England," but
the popular name Domesday--i.e.,
"doomsday," when men
face the record from which there
is no appeal--was in general use
by the mid-12th century. The
survey, in the scope of its
detail and the speed of its
execution, was perhaps the most
remarkable administrative
accomplishment of the Middle
Ages.

At
one time or another the British
empire held sway over a quarter
of the landmass of the world. At
its height, it covered more than
10 million square miles and had a
population of just under 400
million. Today, almost one third
of the world can use english, the
language of 85% of communications
on the World Wide Web.

Education
- Scotland gets £777 per person.
England has only £599 per person
(30% less).
Housing - Would your like a fair
share of the housing budget for
England? In Wales they have £106
per head. In England it is £53
(50% less).
Tourism, The UK Government spends
per head - Northern Ireland
£8.25, Wales £4.99, Scotland
£3.63 and in England 20
pence.
Overall Spending - The total
government expenditure in the
year 1998/1999 per head in
Northern Ireland was £5,450, in
Scotland £4,772, in Wales
£4,586 and in England £3,897.
Representation - Ministers of
Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland can represent the whole
of the UK at Brussels. Neither
England as a whole, nor its
proposed regions can do this.
In the House of Commons,
Scottish, Welsh and Northern
Irish MPs can vote on purely
English affairs and affect what
happens to England, but English
MPs are prohibited from voting on
matters purely affecting their
countries. This is because
England has no Parliament of its
own where people of England can
decide things for themselves.
In England there are fewer MPs
per head of population than in
Scotland, Wales or Northern
Ireland.
Despite having devolution, Wales,
Scotland and... [more]

In
this companion to Englishness,
Godfrey Smith takes the reader on
a tour of all that he holds dear
in England and the English. He
offers comments on our national
life from Churchill to pubs,
Elgar to Rugby, Bertie Wooster to
George Orwell, and from British
beef to the National Lottery.

The
publisher, Edward Allhusen.
EMALLHUSEN@AOL.COM , 31 December,
1998. Godfrey Smith's witty and
stylish A-Z companion of England
and Englishness was published to
great acclaim in the 1980s and is
now available again in this
revised and updated edition.
Smith takes us on a leisurely but
perceptive tour of all that he
holds dear in England and the
English. It is very much an
informal ramble, as if in the
company of an old friend, hence
it is unashamedly subjective,
idiosyncratic and occasionally
capricious. He does not flinch at
English failings, but as he says
'No reader will be left in much
doubt about where my affections
lie. I find England so
overwhelmingly the best country
in the world that it is really
rather bad form to say how much.'
Wearing his learning likely, he
opens with Abroad, that most
un-English of places, and Accent,
the quintessential English
concern, and then treats us to a
display of sparkling and
knowledgeable comments on a
wealth of topics. the breadth and
depth of his imaginative insights
into our national life are a joy
to read. He touches on anything
and everything, from Churchiill
to Pubs, Elgar to Rugby, Bertie
Wooster to George Orwell, and
from Fish and Chips to Evelyn
Waugh. It is impossible here to
do full justice to his writing,
but perhaps it is best summarised
by his observations on the
profound truth that the Thames is
a magic river, Oxford an
enchanted city and England an
imaginary land inhabited by
improbable people.

Another
English tradition that our
socialist government is intent
upon banning. This tradition is
defended by the Countryside
Alliance. The
Government has managed to split
town and country, but is
presently deeply concerned about
loss of votes and may well delay
the implementation of a ban. Save
our country sports! Tally ho!

The
earliest Golliwogg (note correct
spelling) is the hero in books of
verse written by Bertha Upton in
the 1890s, and illustrated by her
daughter Florence. James
Robertson & Sons, the U.K.
preserve manufacturers founded in
1864, use Golly as their
trademark. In the 1920s they
started to issue brooches (also
called pins or badges) carrying
the Golly image. Today many
consider the Golliwogg to be
potitically incorrect and want to
ban him.Little
Black Sambo[Scottish
rather than English]is
subjected to the same treatment.
Save our Golliwogg now!

House
of Lords

About to be
abolished!

Grammar
Schools

The charge
made by liberal and socialist
politicians is that is that
selective education is socially
devisive and unjust. Therefore,
labour poiticians oppose grammar
school education in favour of
comprensive education.
Notwithstanding these strong
convictions, socialist Labour
Party politicians prefer sending
their own children to grammar
schools.

Now declared
to be politically incorrect along
with Baden-Powell and Cecil
Rhodes.

English
short-story writer, poet, and
novelist chiefly remembered for
his celebration of British
imperialism, his tales and poems
of British soldiers in India, and
his tales for children. He
received the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1907.

Take up the
White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Lady
Thatcher is the greatest living
Briton according to a new poll.
In a table of the 50 top
countrymen of all time, the
ex-prime minister ranked 39th,
but she is the only person listed
who is still alive.

English
GREAT
CHARTER, the charter
of English liberties granted by
King John in 1215
under threat of civil war and
reissued with alterations in
1216, 1217, and 1225.

The charter
meant less to contemporaries than
it has to subsequent generations.
The solemn circumstances of its
first granting have given to
Magna Carta of 1215 a unique
place in popular imagination;
quite early in its history it
became a symbol and a battle cry
against oppression, each
successive generation reading
into it a protection of its own
threatened liberties. In England
the Petition of Right (1628) and
the Habeas Corpus Act (1679)
looked directly back to clause 39
of the charter of 1215, which
stated that "no free man
shall be . . . imprisoned or
disseised [dispossessed] . . .
except by the lawful judgment of
his peers or by the law of the
land." In the United States
both the national and the state
constitutions show ideas and even
phrases directly traceable to
Magna Carta.

Mummy

The word
used by boys up to about seven
and a very few upper-class grown
men in England to describe their
mothers. It is also the word used
by most girls from the middle of
the middle class upwards, and
here lies a celebrated piece of
arcane English social lore: for
the words 'Mummy and Daddy' do
not mean just what they say but
are a class indicator signifying
the kind of parents who would
drive a Rover. have a cottage in
the country , and give dinner
parties. Mummy and Daddy may be
dearly loved by their daughters,
but not by playwrights like John
Osborne, whose Jimmy Porter in
Iook Back in Anger vented all his
pent-up social rage against
Alison' s Mummy, 'an overfed,
overprivileged old bitch'. though
when Daddy enters the action he
turns out to be rather gentle and
sympatbique 'He likes you,'
Alison tells her father, 'because
he can feel sorry for you.' Mummy
and Daddy will also not do in the
international pop esperanto
spoken by all the young, and may
therefore be doomed. After all,
every Englishman has a Queen Mum;
a Queen Mummy would be an
excruciating embarrassment. Mama
and Papa are the terms used by
the royals themselves and by
naturalised Englishmen who
started life in Central Europe,
but sound affected from an
indigenous Englishman.
Nevertheless, he still feels a
bit self-conscious just saying
Mum and Dad. Here is another hole
in the language (see also Afters)
that badly needs filling.

As
I was going to St. Ives
I met a man with seven wives.
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?

Orwell
George

George
Orwell, the great English
"socialist protriot"
(an expression which was not then
a contridiction in terms) wrote
in 1941, "England is perhaps
the only great country whose
intellectuals are ashamed of
their own nationality. In
left-wing circles it is always
felt that there is something
slightly disgraceful in being an
Englishman and that it is a duty
to snigger at everything from
horse racing to suet pudding. It
is a strange fact, but it is
unquestionably true that almost
any English intellectual would
feel more ashamed of standing to
attention during God Save the
King than of stealing from the
poor box."

I
have had this idea in my head for
sometime of starting a
Politically Incorrect webpage. I
am particularly interested in
things that were once considered
good, but are now either banned
or considered to be politically
incorrect. My pages include a
list of things that have been or
are to be banned.

BRITISH
POLITICIAN Enoch Powell, a member
of Parliament for 37 years, died
on Sunday. Powell was a man of
extraordinary ability, who had
the courage to speak the truth on
immigration. For this, he was
driven from the Tory leadership
and became known as the best
prime minister Britain never had.

The son of
teachers, Powell won a
scholarship to Cambridge, was a
professor of Greek at 25,
enlisted in the British army as a
private at the outset of World
War II and rose to the rank of
brigadier general.

A
Thatcherite before Thatcher,
Powell was a forceful
intellectual and an eloquent
speaker.

On his
death, Margaret Thatcher said:
"There will never be anybody
else so compelling as Enoch
Powell. He had a rare combination
of qualities all founded on an
unfaltering belief in God, an
unshakable loyalty to family and
friends, and an unswerving
devotion to our country."

We even have
a song about The Roast Beef of
Old England. Here is the melody
(midi) and here are the words.

Would
you believe that the British
Labour Party banned the English
from eating beef-on-the-bone.
Selling it has been a criminal
offence. We have to keep an eye
out from the police nowaday in
case we are discovered in the
pursuit of consuming our national
dish.

When mighty
Roast Beef
Was the Englishman's food,
It ennobled our brains
And enriched our blood.
Our soldiers were brave
And our courtiers were good
Oh the Roast Beef of old England
And old English Roast Beef .

But since we
have learnt
From all-vapouring France
To eat their ragouts
As well as to dance,
We're fed up with nothing
But vain complaisance
Oh the Roast Beef of Old England
And old English Roast Beef .

"To
be born English is to have won
first prize in the lottery of
life".

Financier,
statesman, and empire builder of
British South Africa. He was
prime minister of Cape Colony
(1890-96) and organizer of the
giant diamond-mining company De
Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd.
(1888). By his will he
established the Rhodes
scholarships at Oxford (1902).

Rupert Bear
is a children's character dating
from the 1920's in the UK, who
has appeared in the Daily Express
newspaper since then and has been
anthologised in Annuals since
1936. He was the only character
to appear throughout World War
II, as it was felt that his
disappearance would have damaged
morale(!).

"
I see you Stand like greyhounds
in the slips,
Straining upon the Start. The
game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon
this charge
Cry "God for Harry! England
and Saint George!"

Muffin
the Mule first trotted on to our
screens in 1946, having been
bought by puppeteer Ann Hogarth
for 15s 0d from a travelling
showman. Muffin clumped around on
top of the grand piano played by
Annette Mills, sister of Sir John
Mills, as his strings were pulled
from behind a screen. He made his
debut in For the Children before
being given his own show.
Muffins last TV appearance
with Annette Mills came in 1955
just days before she died.

Every
Englishman has his
"local", known as
"my local" or his local
pub or public house. Mine is the
Tipperary Inn near Balsall Common
in Warwickshire. It's just up the
road from Tipperary Cottage where
the song "It's a long way to
Tipperary was composed. It's
a long way to Tipperary
by Tiny Tim in Real Audio (link
temporarily suspended).

The Sterling
Guarantee states that we will
oppose entry into the single
currency at the next election as
part of our manifesto for the
next Westminster Parliament.

The Shadow
Foreign Secretary, John Maples
and the Shadow Chancellor,
Francis Maude joins William
Hague, every member of the Shadow
Cabinet and over 80% of our Party
membership in confirming this
promise.

Champion of
free minds and markets, she
helped topple the welfare state
and make the world safer for
capitalism.

BY
PAUL JOHNSON

She was the
catalyst who set in motion a
series of interconnected events
that gave a revolutionary twist
to the century's last two decades
and helped mankind end the
millennium on a note of hope and
confidence. The triumph of
capitalism, the almost universal
acceptance of the market as
indispensable to prosperity, the
collapse of Soviet imperialism,
the downsizing of the state on
nearly every continent and in
almost every country in the
world--Margaret Thatcher played a
part in all those
transformations, and it is not
easy to see how any would have
occurred without her.

Born in
1925, Margaret Hilda Roberts was
an enormously industrious girl.
The daughter of a Grantham
shopkeeper, she studied on
scholarship, worked her way to
Oxford and took two degrees, in
chemistry and law. Her
fascination with politics led her
into Parliament at age 34, when
she argued her way into one of
the best Tory seats in the
country, Finchley in north
London. Her quick mind (and
faster mouth) led her up through
the Tory ranks, and by age 44 she
got settled into the
"statutory woman's"
place in the Cabinet as Education
Minister, and that looked like
the summit of her career. But
Thatcher was, and is, notoriously
lucky. Her case is awesome
testimony to the importance of
sheer chance in history. In 1975
she challenged Edward Heath for
the Tory leadership simply
because the candidate of the
party's right wing abandoned the
contest at the last minute.
Thatcher stepped into the breach.
When she went into Heath's office
to tell him her decision, he did
not even bother to look up.
"You'll lose," he said.
"Good day to you."

My tunes
pages lists famous tunes such as
There'll always be an England
with Tim Tim and
There'll always be an England
with Sam Browne. But
also try
The Archers,
Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men and Captain
Pugwash. Here are
dozens of tunes that the English
instantly recognise.

The flag of
the United Kingdom. The English
flag bearing the cross of Saint
George is shown at the top of
this page.

Up

An English
adverb of enormous power. It
lends spectacular magnification
to otherwise unremarkable words;
thus to be 'beaten up' is far
more comprehensive than to be
merely beaten, a 'fry-up' more
enticing than a fry, a 'ton-up'
(100 m.p.h. for the unworldly) on
a motorbike far more dashing than
doing a ton, a 'balls-up' a far
greater disaster than making a
mere balls of something can ever
be; to be 'done up' far more
thoroughgoing than to be done.
And note how in the Harrow school
song, 'Forty Years On' , which
Winston Churchill* so delighted
to sing even in old age, up makes
all the difference. 'Follow up,
follow up, follow up' is a call
to action and to arms; 'follow,
follow , follow' is something you
do when dreamily pursuing the
merry merry pipes of Pan. Up, on
its own, is moreover an expletive
of great if coarse power, as in
'up yours, mate'. It is also used
poignantly in the vernacular
verdict, 'he can't get it up any
more' or more personally, 'he
can't get it up for her' .

Wapping,
the newspaper plant Rupert
Murdoch built in the London
dockland cost him £100 million.
It was, he announced, designed to
print his new paper, the London
Post For six years he tried to
get a viable deal with the print
unions; and for six years failed.
One union negotiator told Murdoch
his best plan was to blow the
plant up. At some time during
that long travail - no-one knows
quite when - he decided on a far
more revolutionary plan. He would
print his existing titles - The
Times The Sunday Times, the Sun,
and the News of tbe World -
there. Eddie Shah had got a foot
in the door when he succeeded,
after a bitter fight, in printing
his free sheets in the north
without traditional union
agree-ments. Murdoch kicked it
down. He printed a section of The
Sunday Times there without a
single print worker His workforce
- all, that IS, except management
and journalists - struck. They
were never to work for him again.
Electricians bussed in each
morning from Southampton ran the
high-tech machines. The
journalists were split into
refusenicks, who would not agree
to the move, and those whc)
would. There were quite enough of
the latter to run the papers. The
dispute lasted a year. Throughout
that time , despite determinecl
picketing and ugly clashes with
the police, the print unions
spectacularly failed to prevent
the four papers getting out. In
the end, they settled for
£6O,000,000 compensation. The
rest of Fleet Street followed
suit, moving en masse to dockland
and able at last to settle with
the previously entrenched unions
on the new technology . While
much of Fleet Street' s troubles
stemmed from the cowardice,
avarice and stupidity of
management and owners, and much
from deep historical roots, the
unions displayed a stunning lack
of imagination in not making a
deal before it came to war. They
had always won their battles with
the owners; they thought they
always would. The vast economies
engendered meant that the
newspaper industry had ensured
its survival for another
generation. The barbed wire was
taken down at Wapping; the
bitterness remains.

Though the
word has been used as slang for a
ninny for a good fifty years now
, it found a new surge of
popularity as a contemptuous
description of anybody who
opposed Margaret Thatcher' s
hard-line monetarist economic
policies then, indeed, anyone who
opposed her at all. In
consequence there was soon a
whole alternative cabinet of Tory
wets sitting on the Conservative
back benches, most notably and
vociferously the former prime
minister Edward Heath
[National
Association of Ted Heath Burners].
With the
departure of Maggie, her
favourite term of contempt has
been quickly marginalised. The
battle between the wet and dry
wings of the Tory party
nevertheless rages on.